Rose Red and Black Bear

by Gwen Williams

  Grinning, Black Bear nodded. “Look over there.”

  She looked, choking back a cry of surprise. “Why, what happened to your pelt?”

  The pelt that once contained him in ursine form, and which had been bloodied and mangled in the fight with the dwarf, existed no more. In its place lay a glittering ensemble in muslin and green and gold silk, a cloak, breeches, boots, an undershirt, a tunic and a vest. She rubbed the fabric of the tunic sleeve against her fingers. “I remember this! On the last night you stayed with us, that morning, as you lifted your paw to unlatch the door, I saw gold cloth shimmering under your pelt!”

  “Yes,” Black Bear smiled. “My raiment fell under the dwarf’s spell, but from time to time the fabric pulled through.”

  “I saw it on that day,” she said, her eyes shining, “and I wondered.”

  “You saw it.” He reached for her hand, kissed it tenderly. “You knew my secret, long before anyone else did.”

  “Aye,” she murmured.

  As Black Bear collected his princely attire and hurried off to the woods to dress, Rose Red gazed after him, smiling. When he disappeared behind a tree, she let the smile fade from her lips. A trace of unease filtered through her.

  Black Bear, restored to his princely form, shall soon be restored into his father’s loving embrace. What will happen to me when that moment occurs? Will Black Bear abandon me, give me up, as so many men gave me up before him? I appear to possess a magic touch when it comes to men. I love them, they love me, and then they leave. So I suspect that Black Bear will be united in marriage to some suitable gentlewoman of a class befitting his station, not a penniless girl from a small village.

  She gazed out at the distant expanse of the horizon. Ironically, the landscape appeared as it did when she first arrived at the beach. The waves lapped at the shore, seagulls cawed, the sun shone. The world continued to move on, inexorably, ever changing, yet constant. A knot tightened inside her belly, and she recognized the sensation, a disappointment she’d grown all too accustomed to in her short life on this earth. Once reunited with his father, Black Bear would leave her. A sob rose in her throat and she doubled over, weeping her grief. Ah, she thought she’d known pain when her father died. But Black Bear—Black Bear who came to them that bitterly cold winter’s night nearly four years ago—to lose him after getting him back, that hurt worst of all.

  And yet, as she stifled her tears and dabbed her eyes, despite the pain of this realization, her life would not end. She would not die, not yet, at any rate. She would live to be an old, old woman. And perhaps she would never marry, but she would be a doting aunt to her sister’s children. Much as the two rosebushes planted at the entrance to the garden gate represented the two sisters’ distinct personalities—the one rosebush white, the other red—so Rose Red realized that her life’s journey would be far different than her sister’s. There would be times when Snow White would envy Rose Red her freedom, her ability to travel as she chose. And there would be times when Rose Red would long for the security and comfort of a marital bed, a loving husband, and children playing by the hearth.

  One cannot expect everything in life to be wonderful, to be perfect, she mused. Sometimes, one has to accept less than a perfect fairy-tale ending.

  Sometimes, it was enough just to survive, to remember the days of desire.

  Rose Red and Black Bear: Chapter 20

  Dressed in his princely attire, Black Bear walked out of the woods, heading directly toward Rose Red. “My goodness,” she murmured, “I hardly recognize you. You look so fine!”

  “I wore these clothes every day of my life,” he noted absently, “and thought nothing of them. Yet they were my means of garb my entire life, until—”

  “—until the dwarf stole your life.”

  He nodded with a somber air, then glanced toward Black Beauty. “Do you think she can withstand the weight of both our bodies?”

  “I’m sure she can.”

  In a matter of moments, Black Bear and Rose Red galloped toward the villa of Paul Rumsfeld. Although her thoughts focused on getting to Snow White, at the back of her mind Rose Red wondered when the time would come for them to part forever. And, when summoned, would the King bring with him the bride who’d been betrothed to Black Bear—to Prince Caspian—all those years ago?

  Despite her fears, she stifled a chuckle. Now that he no longer possessed his ursine form, she would need to accustom herself to referring to him by his proper name, Prince Caspian. She tried out the words on her tongue, but they felt foreign, wrong. He would always be her Black Bear, no matter what the world called him.

  For now, these cares and concerns could wait, for they reached the villa in a short time. Black Bear helped Rose Red dismount, then lightly laced the reins around a column. A butler appeared.

  “My good man,” Black Bear called out. “Would you please provide me with some notepaper and a pen upon which I may write a note to my father?”

  “Of course, sir. Follow me.”

  Rose Red and Black Bear followed the butler into an enormous terra cotta tiled front hallway. She stared about her in wonder and with a growing sense of bewilderment. In her letters home, Snow White had described her new home as majestic, but the vast grandness of the place simply staggered Rose Red.

  The butler showed Black Bear to a writing desk and Black Bear set to work.

  “Milady,” the butler said, bowing low to Rose Red. “May I take you to your sister and her child?”

  “Her child?”

  “Yes, milady, the babe is born.”

  “Here it is,” Black Bear said, signing the note with a flourish and presenting it to the butler. “Would you please ask a messenger to send this note to my father?”

  The butler glanced at the address on the letter, and a new respect came into his expression. He bowed low. “Of course, Your Highness.”

  A messenger scurried into the hallway, making his own bow to Black Bear. The butler whispered instructions into his ear and handed him the note. The messenger rushed away.

  It was done, Rose Red thought. And her loneliness would start as soon as Black Bear was restored to his father, and his intended future.

  The butler said, “Milady, milord. Please follow me.” They ascended a marble staircase and walked the length of a massive hallway until they reached a door marked by two greyhound statues standing sentinel on either side. The butler ushered them inside.

  And there sat Snow White in her bed, pillows plumped up behind her back, a babe at her breast, her husband, Paul Rumsfeld standing above her, with his arm draped over her shoulder. A scene of domestic felicity, a scene, Rose Red thought with regret, that she would never experience herself. She bit back her tears and went to her sister’s side.

  Paul walked over to Black Bear and bowed down low. “Welcome to my humble abode, Your Highness. Welcome to my home, to my wife, and to my infant daughter!”

  He said these words so proudly, so filled with love, that another tiny pang of envy stabbed Rose Red’s heart. But she chided herself. Now was not the time to be engaging in such selfish cares and concerns! This was Snow White’s moment, her triumph.

  “Rose Red,” Snow White said, holding up her infant, “say hello to my little baby Myfanwy.”

  “What a beautiful baby.” Rose Red held out her hands. “May I hold her?”

  “Of course.” Snow White handed the infant child into Rose Red’s arms.

  “I’ve sent for your mother,” Paul said. “She will arrive on the morrow.”

  “Thank you, darling,” Snow White murmured.

  Tears crept down Rose Red’s cheeks. Snow White looked the very picture of maternal bliss. And the regard that Snow White showed her husband was neither forced nor contrived. She must love him.

  Another manservant entered the chamber from an opposite door and whispered in Paul’s ear. Paul’s face brightened, and he looked over at Black Bear. “My Grace, it appears that your father has arrived.”

  “Already?”


  “Yes. Apparently his carriage happened to be driving past my villa when the messenger ran outside. He caught the carriage and gave the message directly to your father.”

  Black Bear’s eyes grew animated. “Oh, that’s wonderful.” He turned to Rose Red. “I am to be reunited with my father, my dear Rose Red.”

  “That is wonderful indeed.” Repressing a sigh, she forced a bright smile.

  And I will say good-bye to yet another lover.

  Rose Red and Black Bear: Chapter 21

  As they waited for Black Bear’s father to arrive, Rose Red turned shyly toward him. “Now that you are in human form, I must call you Prince Caspian, your rightful name.”

  His eyes softened as he gazed down at her, taking her hands in his. “I will always think of Black Bear as my real name. It is the only name I ever heard coming from my lover’s lips. That name will always hold a special place in my heart.”

  A softening sensation filled her heart. Could he be speaking the truth? For she’d always thought of him as her lover, and it warmed her heart that he felt the same way. Knowing that would make their parting a little less painful, she reflected, when he married his betrothed princess.

  A hand brushed against her skirt. She gazed down into her sister’s eyes.

  “I’m so glad to see you again,” Snow White whispered.

  “And I you,” Rose Red said, tears filling her eyes. “And I to see you.”

  It was the only true comfort she derived, the joy, after ten months’ absence from her sister’s life, to see her again, happy, contented, peaceful in her new life. It gave her some small measure of comfort to know at least one of them would be happy forever after.

  A crowd of royal courtiers swept into the room, dressed in the royal raiment of green and gold. Rose Red flinched in surprise at the ceremony of the courtiers’ arrival. What pomp. But this was not her world, would never be her world, she reminded herself.

  A courtier stamped a staff three times. “All bow to King Stephen!”

  Snow White, of course, would not be—could not be—expected to bow, but everyone else in the room bowed low as King Stephen swept into the room.

  Through her lashes, Rose Red drank in the sight of King Stephen. She’d heard so much about this king, what a wonderful ruler he was, how he’d vanquished Queen Guinevere’s generals. But she’d never seen him in the flesh, and never thought of him as the father of her beloved Black Bear. She had expected him to be grandly attired, but instead a tall, thin man, dressed in comfortable, well-cut fabrics, eased into the room. He appeared merely as a well-dressed gentleman, better attired for traversing the countryside than for inducing fear and awe in his countrymen. And yet, despite his appearance, he carried himself with a regal grace, an easy insouciance, as his gaze swept the expanse of the room, taking in every element with his steely gray eyes.

  And so Rose Red bore witness to the moment when King Stephen’s war-weary eyes settled on Black Bear’s bowed form. A look of shock passed across his features. The shock passed, replaced by an expression of sorrow and repressed joy. “My son! My son! Returned to me at last! After all these years away from my hearth and home.”

  He staggered to Black Bear and raised him to his feet. Both men gazed at one another for a long moment, fighting back tears. It was not manly to weep, but their emotion was all too evident.

  Despite her fears for the future, Rose Red watched with tears in her eyes. How would she feel if she were to go for years at a time without seeing her mother, not knowing her fate? For the past four years, since the winter when Black Bear visited their hearth, he’d been absent from his father’s life. And his father, sending his retinue, his guards, his bailiff, looking for him, had searched relentlessly for his son for all that time. He’d thought his son dead, but now his son was restored to him.

  “My son!” King Stephen cried, wrapping Black Bear into, well, a bear hug, and bursting into tears.

  ***

  Leaving Snow White alone with her husband and infant child, the royal party withdrew to a salon on the ground floor, where King Stephen took Black Bear and Rose Red away with him to a private corner.

  “Father,” Black Bear said, his voice filled with emotion. “I want you to meet the woman I intend to marry.”

  Rose Red inhaled sharply and looked to King Stephen.

  The king’s gaze graced her form, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lined mouth. “A worthy choice, my son.”

  A shuddering sob escaped from Rose Red’s chest and she bowed her head. King Stephen reached forward and stroked her hair. “My son, lost to me for all these years, is restored to me, and how fortunate am I? But he also presents me with his beautiful bride.” He sat back against his chair. “A wonderful day for me, indeed.”

  Rose Red’s lips trembled. “You wish to marry me?”

  Black Bear dropped to one knee and took her hand in his. “Rose Red, dear heart, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife and making me the happiest man on earth?”

  Smiling through her tears, she nodded.

  “Splendid,” King Stephen said. “We must immediately plan the wedding.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow?” Rose Red suggested. “When my mother arrives?”

  “A wonderful idea,” King Stephen said.

  ***

  Much later that evening, Rose Red and Black Bear wandered through the marble statuary garden at the back of the villa.

  “A question, my love,” Rose Red said.

  “Yes, my darling?”

  She stopped short, gazing up into his deep brown eyes. Everything about him so altered, yet this one thing, his brown eyes, remained the same. That alone comforted her, when she grew frightened at the tremendous change in him. Above all else, his eyes were the same eyes now gazing down at her. “I don’t know if I can call you by your real name.”

  He chuckled deep in his throat. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m your Black Bear.”

  “I know. But it would be unseemly for me to call you Black Bear during court.”

  “Indeed.” He took her into his arms and kissed her tenderly. “My formal name is Prince Edgar of Caspian, or Prince Caspian, in its shortened form.”

  “In public, then, I shall call you Prince Caspian.”

  “And in our private moments,” he said, his eyes brimming with love, “you alone, of all people in the world, shall call me Black Bear.”

  “Then that shall be your name.”

  “After all these years hearing you calling out my name, calling me Black Bear, I could not withstand losing that name. It is too tender to me to lose it, not after all this time.”

  She smiled through her tears. “Then that is my will as well.”

  Rose Red and Black Bear: Chapter 22

  Mama arrived the following day, breathless, excited, eager to lay eyes on her first grandchild. Paul, overcome with emotion at the sight of the woman who gave birth to his beautiful wife, suggested Mama give up her cottage and come live with them in their villa. Mama accepted this offer with joy.

  On the morrow after Mama’s arrival at the villa, and in the presence of King Stephen, Prince Edgar of Caspian—Black Bear, forever after—and Rose Red joined their hands and their hearts together as husband and wife.

  The wedding was a small, intimate gathering, composed only of those persons who knew and loved the sisters best. At last Black Bear, smiling fondly, nodded to his bride. Rose Red bade her farewells and left the hall on her husband’s arm.

  He surprised her by escorting her to a carriage, one she’d never seen before. It gleamed resplendent, trimmed with gold leaf and led by four horses caparisoned in silver brocade. Black Bear took the reins, and as Rose Red watched in wonder, the landscape flew past her in a dusky glow. She wanted to see all that she could, but she felt weary from the exhausting events of the past few days, and after a time, her eyelids grew heavy. She leaned her head against his arm and fell asleep.

  She must have slept a long time, for when she awoke, the landscap
e had changed entirely. Surrounding her on all sides were mountain ranges and cool, tranquil lakes.

  And there, in the distance, atop a gently sloping hill, stood a house—a castle, really—surrounded on all sides by woods and with an undulating lake in the foreground.

  “Welcome to my home,” Black Bear murmured, driving the horses up the gravel-covered drive. “Now it belongs to you, too.”

  “Oh, my lord,” she murmured, her eyes wide with amazement.

  “With the dwarf gone, I am fully restored to all my lands and titles. I am overlord of this county.”

  “How much land do you own?”

  “Five thousand acres.”

  “I think that’s more than enough for one prince to manage.”

  “And his lady.”

  Black Bear pulled the carriage to the front of the circle drive and left the horses with his manservant. Then he gallantly swung his wife out of the carriage and carried her over the threshold and upstairs to the master bedroom, where he laid her on an enormous canopy bed covered with soft furs and quilts.

  He stood above her, gazing at her for a long moment, a look of love brimming in his large brown eyes. “Do you remember what I used to say to you, back when I came to you, that winter of four years past?”

  “Aye,” she said, tears filling her eyes, “Rose Red, Rose Red, would you have your suitor dead?”

  “Back in those days,” Black Bear said, removing his fur cloak, “I despaired of ever breaking the dwarf’s spell.”

  She nodded. “You remained trapped as a bear for years.”

  “And there came a time when I despaired of ever being able to hold you in my arms.”

  “I dreamt of you.”

  “I know. I remember.”

  She lay back against the pillows, gently drawing her petticoats up to her thighs. Black Bear watched as she did this, his eyes filled with hunger. He unbuttoned his tunic and draped it over a nearby armchair. Rose Red drank in the sight of his muscled abdomen, at the thick thatch of black chest hair, and sighed with desire.

  Black Bear glanced down, then flashed her a sly smile. “I’m no longer in ursine form, but some parts of my bear life stayed with me.”